About Solitude

Recently, a male friend of mine told me how he had created the money for a trip to India so he could do a 40-day retreat with a prominent Sufi Pir. I thought about it, off and on, for several days afterward, wondering why the whole idea kind of….puzzled me. I felt a slight annoyance, too, probably because I have yet to make it to India, and wouldn’t mind going at all, although I doubt that I’d spend my time there doing forty days on retreat. I believe in retreats, don’t get me wrong. In fact, I too have been on retreat for about a year and a half now, a fact which surprises me. It surprised me when I first felt drawn into my retreat, and it surprises me now. I am a “certified retreat guide” in the Sufi Order International. That means I am supposed to be capable of guiding people on silent retreats, intuitively. It’s been awhile since I did so, but I felt reasonably prepared for my own long retreat, and I have had a wonderful long-distance guide to see me through it, largely via email. I must insert a disclaimer here: don’t try this at home, folks. Well, unless you do. Generally speaking, the retreat process is an extremely difficult one, and the retreatant ought to be ready for it. It’s possible I may have been more prepared than some, having done many group and individual retreats, and guided some, as well. There are “retreats” and retreats, of course. I am not speaking of the “retreat” you take if you are an executive for a huge corporation and your “team” retires to the beach for a weekend of mind-games and rest, led by a psychologist. I am speaking of the kinds of retreats taken by the dervishes, the yogis, the desert fathers, the monastics of the various esoteric schools. I am speaking of drawing away from everything, becoming silent, and sitting for long hours every day, practicing intense and difficult meditation practices, eating little, speaking not at all, and working very, very hard. In the Sufi Order, it is called an “alchemical” retreat, the concept based on the work of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who staged the process around the phases of the classical medieval alchemical process. The Sufis I know go on retreat as often as they’re able, and they do retreats of three, six, ten and sometimes even 40 days. And I’m sure that a chance to go and be guided by someone who is steeped in the teachings of one of the traditional Sufi Orders in the East is particularly attractive. The retreat process is a difficult, intensive, and even dangerous one, if the retreatant is not ready for it, and if there is not a guide. Esoteric practice can strengthen the ego, not subjugate it, unless one knows what one is doing. But back to my friend and his retreat in India. Why, I wondered, does one have to go somewhere spiritually impressive (which India obviously is) and be guided by someone who is well-known? Is the retreat better? Are they more enlightened afterward? Why would someone need this?

My own retreat has been quite a humble one: having gone through six surgeries that left me debilitated and depressed, I was looking around, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next, when I felt myself drawn, inexorably, into an intense meditative process. I will admit, my back was to the wall at that time, I had come to the end of all my devices, and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself next. Everything had changed. I had changed. I didn’t know who I was or why I was here. I didn’t know why I was alive, and in all honesty, I didn’t even know if I wanted to be alive. And I was pretty sure that none of my other remedies for this kind of state were going to work. And this time, I wasn’t going to try to make myself feel better. I was going to go for broke. I suppose I decided to put this Sufi path of mine to the test. If I could be healed and made whole, I knew of no other way that I wanted to do it.

I didn’t go to India.

I didn’t pay a lot of money to some notable spiritual teacher to guide me.

I didn’t go away to a well-known monastery or ashram.

I sat down in my rocking chair on my porch. And I practiced. And I practiced. And I practiced. For long hours every day. I read holy books. I corresponded with my guide via email. I listened to incredible music. I listened to the birds chirp and the trees rustle. When my husband came home in the evening, we were together as usual, and when my daughter came home from college for the weekend, we were a family.

I ate carefully, but well. I slept at night. When I could. I did not wear a robe or sleep on a cement floor, as I once did when I went on retreat in the French Alps and made a retreat in a shepherd’s hut.

It worked. The Divine Being blessed me endlessly. I am convinced that I could not possibly be any happier with the results than I would have been if I had traveled to India. I cannot speak of these results here, but if someone reads this who knows…they WILL know, and that’s all I can say. But perhaps I can say that the sky and the earth are meeting right inside here.

I really hope I get to India sooner or later. I hope I get to a lot of places. But God is right HERE. and given that this is the case, I am carrying all the rest anyway.

If you are a male, you may not like what I’m going to speak of now. Unless, of course, you are a male who is in touch with his animus and has the ability to laugh at the absurdity of being human. Just be warned . . . and “don’t shoot the messenger.”

I was speaking of my friend’s trip to India with a woman friend, and I asked her, “what is it that makes someone think they MUST go and seek God under the auspices of some famous and well-known person in a spiritually impressive place?” She chuckled. “Well,” she said mischievously, “he’s a man.” And yes, we laughed….wickedly. So sue me. Yet I do believe there is a bit of truth in the idea that it is the more asssertive, outward part of a person’s nature that causes them to need something outside to bring them to the place of finding that their heart’s desire was available right inside all along.

It’s very convenient.

<Gasho>

At the end of a crazy-moon night
the love of God rose.
I said, “It’s me, Lalla.”

Harnessing the Energies of Love

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Resurrection

The resurrection is a description of how the universe self-corrects, life always reasserting itself even when forces of death and darkness have temporarily prevailed. Like a tiny flower growing through cracks in broken cement, peace of mind emerging at last after periods of deep grief, or people continuing to fall in love despite the ravages of war, love always gets the final say. To lean on the resurrection is simply to recognize what’s true; that if happiness hasn’t arrived yet, then the story isn’t over.

Marianne Williamson, The Alchemy of Easter

Listening to the Muse

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. -- Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey, p.124

The Children of Sorrow…

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. - Thomas Merton

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The dead let go, floating out of their graves, dressed for a wedding. - Charlie Hopkins

Necessary Loneliness

"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Setting the World on Fire

"In the absence of a higher ideal the constant striving after material inventions has led man to such devices as have set the world on fire." --Inayat Khan

Also There

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there
–Hadewijch (13th Century)

About the Rays

If you have visited this blog before and are confused that not only has the domain name changed, so has the title, you know that it was called "Footprints" after the Zen Oxherding poems for quite awhile. The poems are still here (see above).
As to the new title, a long time ago, one of the students of Hazrat (Saint) Inayat Khan, named Kismet Stam, published a book with exactly the same title I have decided to use here. It was a beautiful book and has long been out of print, which is why I feel comfortable using it, and why it is meant as a sort of tribute: Rays, pages in the life of a Sufi. To the Sufi, each of us is a ray of light shooting out from the central Sun that is God. This is the expression of this ray.

Crowned with the Stars

"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you." --Thomas Traherne

SIX

The valley spirit never dies;
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
It is like a veil barely seen.
Use it; it will never fail. - Tao te Ching

DWELLING

I have nothing in my home that I do not find to be useful nor know to be beautiful. --William Morris

The True Invincibles

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. --Gandhi

My Father and Best Friend: Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Hazrat Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan

By my dear friend Gregory Blann

Who does the typing?

I've been a student of the Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for over 35 years. I have been his representative and an instructor of meditation and comparative religion during much of that time. I guide people seeking a contemplative path, in both individual meditative practice and alchemical retreats.
I am a psychotherapist and a teacher of psychology, focusing on the cllinical, depth and transpersonal theories of psychology. I have a Master's Degree in Existential Phenomenology and am "ABD" for my Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology. I am currently open to working with clients under the appropriate circumstances. Email me if you think we could work together in a collaborative fashion. I'll do what I can to help you go where you want to go.

God is in the Machine

With gratitude to the succession of my many and dearly-loved Macs through the years. Writers like to thank pivotal people in their lives who inspired them and helped them to become who they are. I have a long list of those too, but it was the Macintosh computer that set me free: it thinks as fast as I do, it thinks LIKE I do, and it has Soul. And I can listen to Krishna Das while I work on my writing, edit photographs or do creative work. I don’t do Windows. http://www.apple.com/

The Origin of the Footprints

I am following a Sufi path, in the International Sufi Order of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. You will notice many quotes from his writings here, and from those of his successor and my own Pir (teacher), Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The most important thing that Sufism has given me has been complete spiritual freedom, which is why you will read many other quotes here, and my explorations of other paths, other philosophies. The Sufi, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, has two points of view: his own, and that of the other. It is my inherent conviction that, as all rivers lead to the sea, all paths lead to the one goal most sacred to the heart. In our Sufi Order, we call this the Message: “the Message is a call to Awakening for all those meant to awaken, and a lullabye for those who are still meant to sleep.” –Inayat Khan

Of course, he himself would say that we are all awake, just as we are all, in different degrees, partially asleep! But each condition is temporary and meaningful: “I have come here not to teach you that which you do not know, but to awaken in you that which has always been your knowledge.” –Inayat Khan